Billboard Staff’s 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024 (Full List)

BRUNO MARS

Their Year in Pop: While our favorite Hooligan was mounting massive shows around the world in early 2024, there was little news regarding his post-Silk Sonic musical moves. Then, in August, Mars announced “Die with a Smile,” a country-inflected pop-rock ballad with Lady Gaga, which quickly became an undeniable smash, reaching No. 2 on the Hot 100 and spending eight weeks atop the Billboard Global 200. Nominated for two Grammys (including song of the year), “Die with a Smile” was a winning duet — and in October, Mars would follow it up with another one in “APT.,” a delightfully bratty, Ting Tings-evoking link-up with BLACKPINK solo star ROSÉ, which also reached the Hot 100’s top 10 (No. 8) and spent seven weeks atop the Global 200. The combined success of the two hits helped Mars recapture the solo pop powers he put on the backburner during his Silk Sonic era, expertly setting the tone for whatever he has planned in 2025. 

Why Not Top 10? Few stars have two songs as massive as “Die with a Smile” and “APT.” this year… but when those are your only two musical releases for an entire calendar year, it’s hard to say you’re one of the year’s 10 greatest pop stars.

DRAKE

Their Year in Pop: Drake’s 2024 represented an indisputable downturn for the longtime superstar, but he still reminded the world that his pop stardom is unshakeable. Spillover success from 2023’s For All the Dogs kept Drake a consistent chart presence at the top of the year, as he continued his It’s All A Blur / Big as the What? trek, now one of the highest-grossing hip-hop tours in live events history. Then came Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” verse; while the Compton MC scored the feud’s biggest commercial wins, the 6ix God still got some licks in, with “Family Matters” (No. 7) reaching the Hot 100’s top 10, and he generally pushed Lamar to new heights throughout. From sidestepping his label, Universal Music Group (UMG), with his unconventional 100 Gigs archive dump to eventually filing two potentially seismic legal actions against them, Drake’s most notable 2024 moves could bring massive change to the music industry as we know it. Meanwhile, all five of the 100 Gigs tracks that eventually made it to streaming landed on the Hot 100, and Drizzy ended the year as Spotify’s most-streamed English-language rapper in the U.S. and globally. 

Why Not Top 10: His resilience is admirable, but that Kung Fu Kenny K.O. was undeniable.

See all 10 of our Honorable Mention picks for 2024 here.

Hozier — yes, the guy that sent a soulful rock ballad about a romantic relationship thriving in the face of religious discrimination to No. 2 on the Hot 100 back in 2014 — could have made 2024 a well-deserved victory lap after dropping a chart-topping album and embarking on a packed arena tour in 2023. Instead, he spent 2024 securing a commercial re-peak that he earned by spending the past decade growing his cult fanbase, even without further post-“Church” crossover success. 

As his 2023 tour captivated multiple continents, footage from his shows helped Hozier pick up a devoted TikTok fan base who turned him into something of a heartthrob. They were enamored by his vulnerability, long flowing hair and signature “growl”; Hozier had entered his “Forest Daddy” era, and the world was thirsty for whatever that entailed. His newer TikTok audience was also drawn to his brand of folksy alt-rock that had a resurgence over the pandemic and the years immediately following, perhaps best exemplified by the breakout success of Noah Kahan. At the end of 2023, Hozier and Kahan joined forces for a duet version of the latter’s “Northern Attitude,” earning the Irish rocker his first top 40 appearance since “Church” and setting the stage for his 2024 commercial comeback. That level of fanbase-priming all helped result in the eye-popping streaming and sales debut of “Too Sweet,” the song that cemented Hozier’s mainstream commercial resurgence. 

Read our full Hozier Comeback of the Year essay here, written by Kyle Denis.

Can’t say he didn’t call it. Shaboozey’s 2024 album Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going essentially predicted in its title that after a near-decade of struggling to properly break through in the music industry, the hybrid country singer-songwriter was headed for different heights this year. And sure enough, by the end of the calendar, he had one of the biggest Billboard Hot 100 hits of all time, nominations and/or appearances at pretty much every award show you could think of, and the whole world knowing (and sometimes making uncomfortable jokes about) his name. “We in the club now,” he summarized his year to Billboard for his cover story in October – and like his album title, it was true on multiple levels. 

Read our full Shaboozey Rookie of the Year essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger.

When he wasn’t taking his now-famous daily cold plunge in an ice bath, Jelly Roll was everywhere in 2024.

Even if you can’t hum “I Am Not Okay,” which reached No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was the closest Jelly Roll got to a pure pop hit this year, you’re still likely aware of the gregarious rapper-turned-country artist through his sheer ubiquity. Jelly Roll, who turned 40 on Dec. 4, performed on no fewer than 10 collaborations from across the musical spectrum in 2024, alongside the wide-ranging likes of Eminem, Falling in Reverse, Jessie Murph, OneRepublic, Machine Gun Kelly, Halsey, Post Malone, Dustin Lynch and Brooks & Dunn. He also landed three No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for the second year in a row, and topped both the Hard Rock Songs and Mainstream Rock Airplay charts.  

Here’s what it was like to be Jelly Roll in 2024: During one weekend in early February, he paid tribute to Bon Jovi at the 33^rd annual MusiCares Person of the Year gala, followed by performing at the illustrious pre-Grammy gala hosted by Clive Davis the next night. And then to cap off the weekend, he also sang at the Grammy Awards, where he was nominated for two trophies and met his longtime crush, Taylor Swift.

Read our full Jelly Roll No. 10 essay here, written by Melinda Newman.

By January 2024, Billie Eilish had already accomplished more in roughly five years than most pop stars do in a lifetime. The numbers spoke for themselves; since her breakthrough in 2019, the singer accrued seven Grammys, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a No. 1 single alongside four other top 10 hits on the Hot 100, two No. 1 debuts on the Billboard 200 and a sold-out arena tour. By practically every metric, Eilish had more than earned her place in the pantheon of modern pop greats. 

Where others might have rested on their laurels, Eilish spent her 2024 cementing her status as a leading artist of her generation while creating her own version of pop stardom. The scrappy, goth-core teenager who took over the world in 2019 was gone, replaced by a young woman finally starting to find her footing in a turbulent world.

Read the rest of our Billie Eilish No. 9 essay here, written by Stephen Daw.

When Post Malone rang in 2024 with an appropriately 24-song set at a Las Vegas New Year’s Eve concert, he pulled out his biggest hits – the ones that made him a superstar in the late 2010s by crisscrossing genre lines from hip-hop to rock to pop and beyond – including the Hot 100 No. 1s “Circles,” “Sunflower,” “Rockstar” and “Psycho.” But you had to look beyond the setlist for a forecast of what was to come this year. At Fontainebleau’s BleauLive Theater in the early hours of January 1st, 2024, the clearest sign of Post’s creative direction was twofold: his outfit choice of jorts, paired with a tank top, and the red Solo cup that rarely left his hand that night. Yes, Post was about to go country.

The Texas native had flirted with the genre in the past — making his Country Airplay debut on a posthumous duet version of Joe Diffie’s “Pickup Man,” last year and performing the song alongside Morgan Wallen and HARDY at the 2023 CMA Awards. At those awards, Access Hollywood asked backstage if he had his own country project in the works and Post answered, “I think so…yes.”

Read our full Post Malone No. 8 essay here, written by Katie Atkinson.

“OK, they ready: Drop the new music.” 

It was a quintessentially Beyoncé moment, the kind that has come to define the last decade-plus of her continually bar-raising 21st century pop superstardom. Greeting TV viewers around the world during the most-watched event of the year – February’s Super Bowl – Beyoncé co-starred with Veep actor Tony Hale in a Verizon ad in which she kept attempting to literally break the internet, to no avail. At the very end of the spot, having still failed to break the internet – even as “the first woman to launch the first rocket for the first performance in space” – she instead broke character, issuing the above decree over her spaceship’s intercom. 

Lo and behold, two new songs magically appeared online immediately after: “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” presumed to be the first tastes of her upcoming album, the second part of the history-excavating trilogy project she kicked off in 2022 with the dance-oriented Renaissance. As fans raced to DSPs to confirm the rumors of new music that they were seeing on their social media feeds – likely ignoring whatever was transpiring between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers following their game’s resumption – it appeared that the artist who first stopped the world with that digital drop way back in late 2013 had done it again. You could practically hear the chuckling worldwide: Only Beyoncé. 

Read our full Beyoncé No. 7 essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger.

Ariana Grande began 2024 less like her bubbly Wicked character Galinda Upland and a bit more like her embattled counterpart, Elphaba Thropp. She might not have been Public Enemy No. 1 for everybody, but Grande was social media’s main course at the onset of her Eternal Sunshine era. 

After the turbulent Positions rollout, Grande paused her habit of churning out new full-length in almost yearly fashion and prioritized auditioning for – and eventually filming – Wicked. In July 2023, news broke that Grande and her ex-husband Dalton Gomez had separated at the top of the year and were planning to legally end their two-year marriage. Days later, reports swirled that Grande had begun dating Ethan Slater, her Tony-winning Wicked co-star. Slater, in turn, filed for divorce from Lilly Jay, his wife of five years and mother of their son, less than ten days later. Though Grande and Slater began dating after their respective marriages were over — both divorces were legally finalized in time for the Wicked premiere – the chaotic timeline led social media to unfairly cast Grande as the mean girl homewrecker who’d destroyed a happy family. 

Grande, for her part, kept her lips sealed regarding her romantic life, which made her first musical statement 2024 all the more powerful. On Jan. 12, Grande her first solo single in four years: a sassy, house-rooted kiss-off called “Yes, And?” A direct response to the Internet noising marring her name (“Why do you care so much whose d—k I ride?”), the song brought Grande back to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – a spot she did visit twice in the time between Positions and Eternal Sunshine, but only as a special remix guest of star collaborator The Weeknd – with the first new No. 1 single of 2024. Culturally, the song had a much softer presence in the lexicon in comparison to past Grande smashes like “Thank U, Next” or “Problem,” but even before its eventual Mariah Carey remix and Grammy nomination (best dance pop recording), “Yes, And?” did what Grande needed it to: effectively shift the conversation away from her personal life and to her music. 

Read our full Ariana Grande No. 6 essay here, written by Kyle Denis.

“I’m famous but not quite.” 

The “I Might Say Something Stupid” lyric captured the quintessential dilemma of Charli XCX’s career in the decade leading up to her 2024. After 2013 and 2014 brought the British pop purveyor a trio of ubiquitous hits, via her appearances on Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Iggy Azealia’s “Fancy” and her own solo smash “Boom Clap,” it seemed like true superstardom was in the offing for her, and that shooting for anything less would’ve been selling her potential short. 

But after some more commercially minded, purposefully accessible releases met with underwhelming returns and edgier, more forward-thinking sets cemented her as both a critics’ darling and an icon for the true popheads – all without producing any crossover hits the size of her 2013-14 trio – the question lingered over Charli XCX’s whole career: Was trying for stardom and celebrity actually the thing that was selling her potential short? Would she be better off continually scrapping to be the coolest kid on top 40’s fringes, or simply reigning as the unquestioned queen of the pop underground?

In 2024, she answered that question with a third option, one that few – perhaps her least of all – would have previously believed available: She became one of the biggest stars in the world by just being herself, but like, way moreso.

Read our full Charli XCX No. 5 essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger.

Back in 2023, while filming her “HOT TO GO!” music video in her native Missouri, Chappell Roan told a curious onlooker, “I’m just a singer, nothing crazy.” While that statement would seem like a wild undersell now, at the start of 2024, it still tracked. While her debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, dropped in late September and drew rave reviews from numerous critics (including our own), it moved a modest 77,000 album equivalent units by 2023’s end, per Luminate.

What a difference a year makes. Not only has Roan earned her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 since then, but she’s placed seven singles on the chart, including one No. 4-peaking smash (“Good Luck, Babe!”); she netted six Grammy nominations at the 2025 ceremony, including in each of the Big Four categories; drew record-setting crowds at festivals; and saw Midwest Princess reach No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, earning a whopping 1.88 million album equivalent units in the U.S., through Dec. 12, according to Luminate. Since then, it’s been all rise, no fall.

Read our full Chappell Roan No. 4 essay here, written by Joe Lynch.

Taylor Swift ended with a finale, then another, then another. That’s how the last surprise song of the Eras Tour played out, at the record-setting trek’s final performance on Dec. 8 in Vancouver: sitting down at a piano adorned with decorative flowers, Swift performed a mash-up of “Long Live” and “New Year’s Day” — the closing tracks on Speak Now and Reputation, respectively — as the parting acoustic performance of the stadium trek. She oscillated between verses, then choruses, mixing images of gratitude and hushed togetherness in the middle of thousands of breathless fans. 

Swift’s 2023 was awe-inspiring, the type of monumental career year where you could name a handful of different defining accomplishments — from the launch of Eras to “Anti-Hero” becoming her longest-leading Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit to “Cruel Summer” receiving a viral explosion to a pair of enormous Taylor’s Version releases — and still leave a dozen others on the table. She was named our editorial staff’s Greatest Pop Star of 2023, after winning in 2021 and 2015 before that – the only artist to top our list twice in three years, and three times total. Swift was the biggest star on the planet when 2023 began, and by the end, she was one of the biggest stars ever to grace this planet.

Read our full Taylor Swift No. 3 essay here, written by Jason Lipshutz.

What do Jesus and Sabrina Carpenter have in common? For one, “Jesus was a carpenter,” as the sassy singer-songwriter said in 2023 to Variety. But secondly, by now both have successfully turned water into wine. After relationship drama dragged Carpenter into the limelight just three years ago, Sabrina regained control of her public image — and after years of hard work, a string of smash hits and a no-misses album propelled Carpenter to superstardom in 2024, cementing her status as America’s newest sweetheart.

Carpenter was already a viral sensation going into this year: her 2023 made her one of the most promising breakthrough pop acts, mainly due to her showmanship and spicy sense of humor. It felt as if everyone was waiting in anticipation for each newly penned outro to live performances of her breakout hit “Nonsense” — some of which were delivered on her Emails I Can’t Send Tour, and some during her highly anticipated opening sets at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, where some attendees showed up in full Sabrina-inspired, heart cutout-corseted outfits. Her retro aesthetics, carefully curated performances and suggestive lyrics captivated real-life audiences around the world and charmed the internet.

Read our full Sabrina Carpenter No. 2 essay here, written by Meghan Mahar.

Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 was about many things, but first and foremost, it was all about him letting people know just what he’s capable of. It was essentially the thesis statement behind the biggest song of his year (“Sometimes you gotta pop out and show n—as”), with a sentiment that also ended up offering the title to the centerpiece event of his year. And throughout 2024, the often low-profile rapper did indeed keep popping out, emerging with new releases or revelations that captured headlines and captivated the culture. By year’s end, the people had unquestionably been shown, in ways they would never forget.  

What made Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 so remarkable was that he didn’t just remind us of all the reasons why he was so big at his commercial and cultural peak – he showed that he could do things we’d never even seen from him before. He showed that he was capable of hitting heights no other rapper had reached this decade, a period that had otherwise marked something of a downturn for the once seemingly indomitable genre’s mainstream prospects. He showed that he was able to create cultural moments of both singular blunt-force impact and massive historical gravity – and then to do it again, and then again. And he showed that at his absolute best and biggest, he could dominate the streets, the charts and everywhere in between with equal sun-blocking vastness, and emerge as the winner not only when pitted against his most direct adversaries, but against any other potential peer in popular music. 

Read our full Kendrick Lamar No. 1 essay here, written by Andrew Unterberger.